General Question

What are the possible effects of having too many windows/tabs open other than the "freezing" problem?

I know the worst that could happen is it freezes and you have to reboot. Let’s say the 10th wondow/tab makes it freeze, but what little things could happen as side effects of having too many tabs, before you open the 10th tab? Loading takes longer and longer the more tabs you have open? I don’t know… but what else?

@flo – Sorry, but XP is notorious for such problems. What can you do? Well, there comes a time when you should just reinstall. Either you’ll have the original install CD, or you’ll have an ISO partition on your hard drive that you access by pressing ALT-F10 when you boot. Just make sure you back up your My Documents folder and your email before you do so.

Or if your computer is powerful enough for it, consider upgrading to Windows 7. And you’ll be rid of such problems.

Or, better yet, install Linux. But you gotta be an uber geek to install it and get everything working correctly.

With each additional tab your processor is more and more tasked. So, of course, you will experience some slowing and eventual freezing. Aside from that, the only thing I can see happening is confusion.

@XOIIO – Yes. Ubuntu is a good choice for someone’s first Linux. But a noob might be stumped as to why, for example, they can’t get DVDs to play from the base install (getting all the necessary patches from apt-get [or just figuring out which ones they need] might be a bit overwhelming at first). Windows, being a commercial product, can license and include everything right out of the box.

I have to go with @JilltheTooth here since I have never had any issues as the result of having too many tabs open. Then again, the worst CPU I’ve had in recent memory was an Intel Atom 270 in my old Netbook, which also had the least RAM (1GB), but even that thing had no problems having a couple of dozen tabs going unless too many of them had videos going. Multiple videos played havoc with the GPU. But my systems since then have been 2–8 times powerful, had GPUs at least 10 times as good, and had no less than 3GB of RAM, so I haven’t had many issues. The upgrade from XP to 7 also helps considerably ;)

However, trying to load multiple pages simultaneously will run into issues regardless. For instance, one of the bookmarks I have opens up eight pages, each with many fairly large pictures. Needless to say, my computer bogs slightly when it is trying to do that, but that is largely due to the limits on my internet connection. Then again, loading each page individually takes just as long overall as loading all eight at the same time, so it’s effectively moot.

@everephebe See, I normally try run into issues roundabouts 50 on Opera, 20–40 on Firefox (depending more on how long Firefox has been running without restarting). But I work around this by constantly having at least Firefox and Opera open at the same time, and often Chrome, too. And, some of the problems are like 50 on Opera is fine, unless I’m trying to download something in a timely manner, and then not so much.